


a shame you have to fight for survival in your sleep

by saturnsage



Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 00:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17477975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturnsage/pseuds/saturnsage
Summary: Alucard looks at him silently, then comes close. “So you became a man, Belmont.”





	a shame you have to fight for survival in your sleep

**Author's Note:**

> This sat in my google docs collecting dust. Whatever.

It’s a holy day, or should be, he’s sure of it somehow. The snow has been piling up under his boots so much they’ve begun eating burrows in the rubber, and there’s a stillness in the air where it wasn’t before.

The sky’s so grey it feels like the middle of the night, and he’s awake. It isn’t that he’s not tired, it’s just that he’s not in the particular area of life where he’s sure he’ll wake up if he lets his head roll down, and he’d prefer to do that with at least a bottle of ale in hand. 

He pulled a dead stag out of the bayou tonight. There were riles in the eyes, and the fur was too matted, so he just sawed off the antlers, and left it be. 

How many weeks has it been? How many miles seen he’s seen something living? It must have been at least three, at least forty. He can’t help but think his mouth is cracked close, sewed in, opening only for some mead, never talking. Even tonight, when it feels like one of those nights when his mother would light one of nine candles and told him stories about a woman and a man and decapitation (then they’d go to the church and listen to a story about a woman and an angel and birth, which sounded infinitely uninteresting), even tonight he’s still not sleeping, still not talking. 

He pulled a body out of the bayou he just passed tonight. A dead stag. Rot starting from the eyes to it’s hooves. He sawed off the antlers, pocketed them, and left it be. It didn’t feel like grave-robbing, because in the natural world there is no such thing as graves. Instead, there’s only scavengers. His fingers are still slightly caked with mud, and the antlers prick at his hip whenever he walks too swayed. 

The sky is so grey it feels like midnight, and there’s a stillness in the air that would have seemed holy if he could remember what holy felt like.

The antlers prick at his hip once again, and that’s when he calls it a day. He gets off the road, the main one with the snow nipping at his boots, and into the forest, like some running bait. It doesn’t matter if he’s seen or not, not as long as he keeps the gold embroidery of his house symbol covered. 

Funny, he’d think keeping it hidden would make him ache more. Maybe it’s been too long since he used his last name, and he’d forgotten what it felt like to be labeled something other than heretic. Heretic, but at least a respected one.

There’s a tree, old and huge, untouched save by birds and bugs. Moss grows over it like a second bark, and the snow isn’t as deep as it is on the roads. He sits under it, thinking of holy and unholy and the too many holes on his socks.

What makes a holy thing holy?

Fire, salt, and silver. The Father, the Son, and the Holy fucking spirit. 

What used to make a Belmont holy? They don’t use those things much.

All he knows that if you looked under his tongue you’d see charms stamped there, ones that help him from baluars. (He pulled a dead stag out of a bayou, and it felt like a body.)If you looked into his ear you’d see the whispers of all the curses he ever collected. (It wasn’t worth anything, so he sawed off the antlers.) If you looked under his hair he still has scabs and bite marks left over his skull. (When he tied the antlers to his belt, he left the stag be.) 

Those are things more biblical to him than the stained glass in the churches that his father made him go to, lips pressed. He can tell you how fast his blood flows when a snake bites him, and it would be more comforting to him than a prayer.

Whips made of the holy trinity never work, so he uses this one right here, where his ancestor still lives and stings his hand with her hatred and her revenge. (That’s the part they never told in the stories about Sara, she was kind, but only to living things.) Revenge and anger are the best things to fight against the dark, since it’s never easily corruptible. 

His hands are calloused in strange places, and each blister he gets is another spell of his family’s kind that keeps the darkness away for another day. He could name with one eye closed and blinded what kind of hellspawn he killed, he could taste the seconds on how fast he kills them.

What made a Belmont holy? he thinks, when the snow starts to sting his face, when the tree seems too soft to be a regular tree.

Loyalty, purity of heart, strength. Loyalty involves making sure that even when kelpies stomp your feet with their teeth, you won’t run. Purity of heart involves running from unicorns and making sure that they don’t rip a maiden to shreds. Strength involves lifting mountains with only your bare hands to get the orcs out. Holy things in any church, but outside they don’t look so clean as the priests make it.

The Belmonts have always been known for their passion in their work. 

Trevor is no different, in a way. He still wants to beat monsters so far into the damned Wallachian ground they see their old man Satan face to face. He still feels lighter when he holds his leather whip in hand, still almost grins when it sings. (It should hurt more that it’s been months since he’s done anything like that, but maybe he’s just forgotten.)

The difference is this; monsters don’t necessarily mean demons and sirens and rusalkies and the fucking dead-living and all the other things his mother taught him against. Sometimes, monsters can also wear crosses over their chest and claim that they’re working for the Risen Christ. 

His parents never taught him how to fight against those, however. Hell, it was the only time he’s ever seen his father kneel.

Trevor Belmont, House of Belmont, Family Belmont, last son of Belmont. Never lost a fight with a beast, always seems to lose to man. 

The antlers are fuzzy, when he rubs his thumb against them. Strong, but fuzzy. He pulled them out of a bayou earlier this night, without much ceremony. His breath comes in white clouds as he breathes out, as he stares at them. Maybe he could make a couple of knives out of them. Maybe he could just leave them. It’s hard to whittle pure bone, especially when it’s been dead for so long. 

He sighs. Pulls out his carving dagger nestled on his chest. Whittles it slowly. It’s hard work, sure, but antlers are dreadfully useful, and they are quite pretty.

__

There is a reason why he prefers walking alone in the empty roads, in the empty woods, with a mouth with no tongue. There is a reason that he picks the biting snow over shared hearths, and why he picks blackened fingers over a warm meal.

It’s a village, one closer to the borders than any others they’ve been in, and it seems as if there’s a restless, oil-like energy to the place, filled with man and filth. There’s big-bellied men with balding heads, and seated next to them are big-eyed youths staring at pints of foaming mead. The only women are the bartender and the girl with thin straw braids wearing no shoes, sitting next to someone who’s probably paid a pretty penny for the privilege. There’s boots stomping and there’s guffaws and there’s no cold save for the draft that comes in whenever the doors open. It’s filled to the brim with men and rot.

He is one of those men. He is a man that was born to kill off everything that grows rotten, and it’s easy to remember just how rotten he himself is, in these oily walls. Don’t fight fire with fire, his mother always said, when she could pick up an entire century old oak tree with her arms, it will only cause the death of a forest. She meant it to say don’t become a monster, don’t get too violent. 

Now, he can’t help but feel as if it means don’t stoop as low as the people who didn’t think twice of starting a pyre and picking at random who to burn in it.

Trevor drinks, when the laughs of those big-bellied men start pricking at his ears. He drinks when there’s a young bard, youthful and high in voice, singing shrilly about some forgotten battle. The men in cloth sang when he rode into his village that night.

Where’s the fire? He had asked, already thinking. Phoenix, dragon, maybe some other beast. Where’s the fire here, with all these drunk men and heavy-busted women? 

They said nothing. Everyone laughs at some racy joke a customer said.

Nobody ever says anything when you’ve got your family locked into their own estate, when you crack open the door with your feet and run into the rooms, looking for something that breathed. All you see is the burnt corpses of your pretty baby sisters, your pretty baby brothers, your beautiful mother and beautiful father, and still they say nothing. The laughs in here drown out the singing, even though there’s three men calling for an encore, and throw some silver pieces the bard’s way. The man with the girl sitting next to him starts whispering in her ear, smile as greasy as the fish bones he’s been picking at. The girl giggles. Trevor wonders how much the man has paid for her, and how much of that money will go to her family. 

He drinks, and with each swallow his scar punches even more. A storm will come, if it’s aching like this. He hates storms. Makes his clothes damp and his eye starts losing its sight. 

Everyone in this place slept when his house burned down. How sweetly did they sleep? How carefree? How quietly did they snore, as his mother, ash visible in the holes of her throat, begged him to run? How much did they sing? How many pressed their wives or their paid-for maidens against an old mattress?

He drinks until he can try to give himself his own holes, to stave off the guilt that is surviving past your death date.

___

 

“But you’ll die too,” The vampire questions, voice low and sweet, like figs drenched in honey. It sounds curious, it sounds of a songbird. Golden eyes flickering red watch him, watch his teeth.

Trevor can practically feel the cold, lukewarm air from the vampire’s breath skitter on his neck. It’s sickening, it’s intoxicating. 

Death is so close to his throat, and he wants to sing with how pretty it feels. 

“But I don’t care,” He grins, blood boiling in the feeling of something new, something unknown and fully known. 

___

In the end, he didn’t die. The speaker girl threatened to burn the vampire to a crisp, and Trevor is near disappointed. God, what a way to go. Bitten by a vampire, body burnt in fire. How ironic. How stereotypical. How fitting.

They walk up to the city of Gresit. Trevor gets drunk, and doesn’t die.

He wouldn’t call it a living, either.

___

 

Sonia has always told him that the Belmonts inflict many curses on themselves. 

It’s easy to flinch away from a fire. Too much warmth can get you into trouble, and too much trouble isn’t something he’s looking for when he’s this lung-tired and this skin-cold.

Sypha, for some unblessed reason, shivers under her robes.

“Is it true?” Sypha asks him now, when the campfire glints warm enough against their shivering bodies, when his cloak covers her enough so she could be buried. “That the Belmonts dealt with black magic to fight off the monsters?” 

“You can’t fight fire with fire,” He replies, alcohol letting his tongue loose. “Makes a bigger...fire fucking..thing.” 

You cannot fight fire with fire, his mother had taught him as soon as he knew what it meant. It will only lead to the whole forest burning down. It’ll lead to a burnt mansion and a ghost of a last name.

 

Alucard hums at that, golden hair burning sunlight with the campfire in front of him. Close-mouthed, tight-lipped, that’s how he replied. Good, in his opinion. Snakes only show of their fangs when they’re about to strike. “Is that why the Belmonts tried to be in good terms with the church? To use the power of God?” 

He snorted at that, barked a laugh driftwood bitter, sneered with all his teeth shining in the shared mixing campfire and moonlight at the vampire. “You don’t use water to put out a fire flared by oil, either. Just makes everything go damned well to hell.” 

Alucard stares at him with his golden eyes, unreadable and inhumane. It feels like a mirage, him being here and not trying to rip out either Sypha’s or Trevor’s throats. His human figure is just an illusion, like one of the illusions a siren pulls off. Even so, he wasn’t doing a very good job keeping his supernatural part from himself. A spider trap, a tarp-placed sinkhole. 

Trevor shudders when those golden eyes of his glint. 

‘Monsters are never kind,’ His mother warns him, in his ringing head. ‘They are never good. The only good things they do are lie, and keep their word.’

Alucard has never promised he would treat them humanely. 

Trevor suddenly gets the thought that perhaps, humanely isn’t a very good thing after all. 

____

 

He is 13, young and proud. His father is a Belmont by marriage, and his mother is a Belmont by birth. Sonia Belmont, strong and stronger with her children under her arms. 

‘The world is good,’ She had told her, when she let her calloused fingertips press against his cheeks. ‘The world is terribly good, and that is why we fight for it.’ 

Trevor is 13, just having begun to realize that his place isn’t just to be above others, but with them, to protect all that is good and all that is good are people and he would know this, would believe in this for all of his life. 

 

___

 

There is not a single man or woman in this village that helps another. The fire in these taverns glow so bright it hurts his eyes. 

 

There is not a single good thing left in this world, and perhaps there never was. 

 

Still, Trevor looks. 

He finds that many men prefer him using his fists to help himself, many women scuttle away from him when he throws out biting curses. 

He knows he is not the best man, nor perhaps even a good one. 

If his mother saw him, would she have liked him? Would she have seen him as someone to protect?

 

He cannot help but scream to the moon, the moon that never listened to him. He is not a child of the night, and never will. The moon is a lover of the dark, and he was just a child, just a child.

“Listen to me, you bastard,” he yells, throat raw and eyes bleeding, “I was just a kid. I was just a kid who wanted to help.”

Alucard looks as if the moon worships him, and it makes his skin prickle. The moon worships only the darkest thing. Alucards figure is threaded with everything Trevor was born to get rid of. 

The vampire blinks, not unkindly, but barely. The fangs show in the moonlight. They show much better than in the daylight. 

Trevor touches his whip, to steady his hands, to reassure himself, to remind himself. His throat hurts. He needs something to burn it. “I was just a kid,” he says, weaker. “Till they decided that that was a damnation in front of God. I had no choice.” 

He needs a drink. He needs a drink. He needs a drink he needs a drink he needs a drink he needs-

“I had no choice. I helped, but I turned into this.” 

A monster that even the moon can’t stand.

Alucard looks at him silently, then comes close. “So you became a man, Belmont.”

A man that the sun doesn’t touch. 

Alucard looks at him with golden eyes. “It would have been so easy for you,” He tells Trevor, when he sidles closer to him, “To become a villain.”

Trevor swallows, and pulls the vampire in closer, and finally understands what a knife built for murder but used for healing tastes like.

 

He cannot imagine anyone being interested in him. 

He’s too feral-drunk, with teeth too chipped to kiss, and eyes this shade close to blind. His hands are never empty, be it a bottle of ale, or a whip much holier than he ever was. Belmont pride, Belmont airs, and all that posh. 

The old Speaker told him that the reason he’s like this is because he gave up. That’s not necessarily true. 

 

There’s a difference between giving up and wanting to give up. There’s a difference between drinking for fun or drinking to maybe finally hit your head against the table for good. He didn’t give up, he’s just trying to make his finish line arrive faster. Helping, being the person his mother wanted him to be, that’s all just going to drag him through everything longer.

He doesn’t know what the hell to think of the vampire. All he can seem to think of are those sharp teeth and sharp eyes and soft hair and soft skin.  
Alucard’s like a knife built for hurting but used for healing. It’s a terrible thing, Trevor thinks, to be immortal with a mortal heart. It’s a terrible thing to see yourself and realize that you can’t have one foot in each line. 

The blond’s lukewarm breath skitters onto Trevor’s collarbone, and Trevor can feel the proximity of the fangs from his own neck. And he lets it grow closer. And he lets himself close his eyes. And he lets his mouth move in ways it usually doesn’t. And he lets himself dance with death in sweeter way. And he doesn’t think.

 

__

 

They move onward, to the castle filled with Alucard’s cute little childhood memories. Alucard sometimes laces his hands against Trevor’s own, and sometimes he doesn’t. He’s very tempermental for a brooder.

Sypha rolls her eyes, and calls them children. 

 

__

 

He finds what he’s looking for when they arrive here, but he didn’t realize how much the open sunlight of it all would hurt.

“You can’t do this every fucking time, Sypha.” He says, tight and balled up, jaw clenched and hands aching. 

The village with no name, no sign of life, still weeping the blood from it’s streets. With the way the bodies are rotting in their homes, it’s been a week since the night horde had come. Goat hooves are swarmed by maggots, rats balled up and splattered right under their boots. Trevor looks to his left, where the disintegrating body of what was once a well-fed man lets it’s entrails color the brown grass under it deathly. It’s face is scarred, eye sockets empty, but there’s fear on the face no less. The body is one of many, just one. The houses are still smoldering, and the glass still crunches under his weight. 

It’s a picture he’s too used to. It’s the same thing, the same thing as Gresit, as Targoviste, as all the other cities. The night horde only knows how to paint one picture. 

 

Sypha vomited when they first were assaulted by the stench. Now, she’s grabbed a shovel, and furiously digs a hole next to the corpse of a beheaded woman. Young, it seems. Might’ve been pretty too. The body’s dress is in tatters. Sypha ignores him, arms shaking with her work. 

Alucard is...somewhere, checking the perimeter for any survivors, any food, and any shelter. Trevor already knows he won’t find anything. He’s done the same thing before, alone. The road always has the same landmarks nowadays. 

“Sypha,” He tries again, louder, rougher. “It’s useless. Leave the bodies be.”

She doesn’t drop the shovel, instead she digs faster, the dirt ruining the hems of her Speaker robes. It’s the only sounds in this damned village; the shovel, their breathing. The body of the woman is so pale, compared to fire and ice Sypha. Sypha doesn’t belong here, finishing other people’s duties.

“Trevor,” She manages, choked. She’s crying. “You’re a monster, if you can’t even spare a single thought for these people.” 

Trevor swallows.

___

 

Sypha is a beautiful person. She is good, so good that it makes Trevor’s heart ache, because where he sees broken glass, she finds the sun lighting the streets with rainbows.

Sypha curls into his chest as an apology, and he thinks that maybe he could be better, if not for Alucard, then for her. 

“It must be so hard for you,” Sypha whispers, while she falls asleep next to him, soft and warm. “To be a hero.”

Trevor shudders, and thinks about how hard he has been looking for what he believed in when he was younger, when he didn’t realize fire could burn.

__

 

His mother was wrong. The world isn’t good. If it was, Dracula wouldn’t be here, bleeding it to the ground. He wouldn’t be here, holding Sypha in his arms, with no family and no dignity and no name. 

Trevor Belmont is a vacuum, if you will. A hole to be filled, be it a graveyard or a garden plot. Sypha, dear Sypha, fills him with her loyalty, with her love and her hope. Alucard, doe-gold eyes and soft soft voice Alucard, gently fills him with warmth that doesn’t singe and his own love, his own trust and his teeth that don’t bite. 

The world isn’t good, and his mother is dead because she was wrong. 

Trevor looks up to the sky, where stars burn so brightly it looks like thousands of holes revealing heaven, shorn by fallen angel swords. 

Trevor breathes out, and thinks about how wrong he was to think that the world was bad. He would've been dead, thinking like that. Not in the way his mother was, no. Worse, maybe. 

Sypha is dancing against the fire, laughing with her eyes as she retells a story from her people and Trevor wants to let himself laugh with her. 

She is the most beautiful girl he's ever seen. A firebird, a phoenix, any of those birds that kings gave their golden apples to. New, young, glittering and pure. Unicorns don't hold a candle to her, the sunrise is nothing to how she jumps around the flames. Her blue, ice blue eyes have the power to melt the arctic, the dams, the entire iced oceans. Medusa heads fall to dust. She is the most beautiful girl Trevor has ever seen, and it hurts how he cannot even laugh for her.

He can't laugh for her, he cannot even smile he has forgotten what it is, simple pleasures. 

"in not asking you to change in a single morning," she says. "You only change when there is something in you that you have locked."

"I don't have the key to this part of you,” she said.

Heavens, he wants her to open every door he has. But, he’ll have to do it himself, clean up the dust with his own two hands. She deserves a lot better than a ratty half-dead dulled weapon for a friend, for a companion. She deserves to be met halfway. 

And she’ll be met half-way, he thinks. Eventually. Maybe not today, or maybe not in a week, but eventually.


End file.
